“No, I’m serious.” He frowned. “In the paper . . . were you in some sort of date auction?”

“Oh my God. You do recognize me.” Through Hugh’s machinations, I’d participated in a charity date auction last December. I’d ended up going for an obscene amount of money and had made the paper.

“If I remember, you did a lot for that charity.”

“What can I say? I love kids.”

Our turns came, and we each got new drinks. Stepping off to the side, we continued our conversation. “I don’t suppose,” he said, “that I’d have to pay that much for a date?”

“You’re asking me out?”

“Seeing you in person? Yeah. I kind of understand the price now.”

“Wow, you don’t waste time on formalities.”

He shrugged. “I don’t have time to. Too busy with work.”

Ah. One of those guys. I didn’t have Hugh’s ability to see souls, but something told me I wouldn’t get an enormous energy fix from this guy. Of course, just then, it didn’t matter. I was drunk and distressed and a sleazy guy seemed just like what I needed right then, no matter how inappropriate the setting. In fact, the inappropriateness kind of added to it.

“No, not that much. Though to tell you the truth, I’m kind of busy myself. I don’t like to waste time on something that’s going to fizzle out. I’m sort of a try-before-you-buy girl.”

He studied me very carefully, face serious. “What exactly do you have in mind?”

I inclined my head toward the house. “They must have a bathroom in there.”

As expected, he didn’t take much coaxing. The house was wide open to anyone who needed to get in there, and we passed wait staff moving in and out as we sought one of the house’s many bathrooms. We finally ended up at a small one on the second floor that was adjacent to a guest room. It didn’t look like it saw much use, and as soon as we shut the door, we were all over each other.

He’d told me along the way that his name was Wes and that he had some sort of corporate position in a bank downtown. I’m not sure why he was trying to impress me, seeing as I’d made this painfully easy for him, but I appreciated the weak effort anyway. My biggest concern was his relationship to the family, but it turned out he was a friend of a friend of a business associate, so I had little worry about this getting back to Casey.

My skirt came off almost immediately, followed by a rapid unbuttoning of my blouse that pulled off a button. It skittered across the floor, lost forever. He left the blouse itself on, simply hanging open, and ran his hands over my body, taking in the black lace bra and matching panties.

“Good God,” he breathed. “You might be worth more than that auction price.”

“I’m not a call girl,” I snapped, irritated for some reason I couldn’t entirely understand. “And make this fast. My friends are going to be waiting for me.”